Time flies and our photography blog Ueberlicht.com has its first anniversary today! Thanks a million, dear readers, for sharing our passion, following our posts, supporting us with likes and pluses throughout the social networks and for your feedback and comments, of course.

Our first year in English was short of time but full of analogue pleasures and we promise to provide you with more cameras, film material and technical stuff from ancient times as well as nowadays during the year to come.

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Once in a while, it is time to bethink the beginning. Just like we celebrate our birthdays, we can pay tribute to the cradle of photography, the camera obscura. As photography is not a spring chicken anymore, the party starts off slow: in the form of the Pinhole Day which is taking place for the 13th time today. Everybody who is interested in pinholes and long exposures is cordially invited to join the celebration. The only condition for the participation is a pinhole camera, no matter whether it is analogue, digital, self-built or bought.

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We have been looking forward to hearing this news for a while: The HARMAN TiTAN 8×10 Pinhole Camera is available now! It (or should I rather write „He“ as the press release headlines „Big Brother is watching you“?) is the HARMAN TiTAN 4×5 Pinhole Camera’s large counterpart. One year ago, we were mightily impressed by the little brother already, now regarding 8×10″ the film format is four times as large.

The included pinhole’s diameter is 0,52 mm / 0.0205″, which makes for an aperture of f288 in combination with the accompanying cone that has 150 mm / 5.9″ focal length (equivalent to 20 mm in 35 mm format), and promises a very good image quality. The 8×10″ camera prototype shown at the Photokina 2012 appeared to us like a real giant, but this circumstance is simply due to the size of the film material. Its final weight of 800 g / 28 oz. does not give cause for any complaints. Like the 4×5“ pinhole camera the 8×10“ version is produced by Walker Cameras in the UK. We are especially happy that our wish for an accessory shoe is fulfilled since the prototype was lacking one. Thus you can for example attach a view finder which facilitates positioning the camera right.

As of now the HARMAN TiTAN 8×10 Pinhole Camera can be ordered from the UK for about £ 300 (momentarily circa 350 Euro) and will be available in the rest of Europe in mid April and in North America in mid May.

Filmwasters shared a first video review by Leon Taylor on their Vimeo channel which shows the HARMAN TiTAN 8×10 in action. We hope that we will be able to report from our own experience soon – by then we are well provided with pleasant anticipation and a bit of reverence.

Agfa Click II

More than three years ago an Agfa Click II became my constant companion. This circumstance was neither achieved by a high-resolution image sensor nor by any other special features, but is owed to the absence of modern settings. Apart from all the things the Click is lacking, it holds some attributes that make photography such a pleasure. The 50 year old leather case, that closes with a press button on its back and still is in near mint condition, as well as the sturdy plastic body are just the beginning.

Technical details

The Agfa Click II was produced in Germany from the end of the 1950s until 1970 – how many cameras can claim that nowadays? It has approximately 75 mm focal length, which is almost a normal lens for 6×6 cm medium format. The settings of the fixed-focus lens that focuses on 4 m to infinity, are limited to one lever, which can be set to “sun” (ca. f 16) or “clouds” (f 8.8). Apart from changing the aperture, the same selector can be used to swivel in a built-in close-up portrait lens (f 8.8), that focuses on 2.5 to 4 m. The exposure time always amounts to 1/30 sec, which is why sometimes photographs become blurred by camera shake – but this simply belongs to the Click’s characteristics. Once there was the clip-on flash Clibo enabling the Click to take pictures regardless of sunshine, but it was only produced in a much smaller number of pieces. Furthermore, fitting batteries and flash bulbs are extremely rare today.

When I bought my pre-owned Click II, I found an old film inside that had not been manufactured since 1974 – which also explains the camera’s sound condition. Since then I have almost exclusively equipped the camera with (in part expired) slide film. By choosing the film material the last “setting option” is gathered.

En route with the Click

In all fairness, the technical details concerning the Click are of marginal importance. Much more essential are subjects that stand to benefit from a restrained unsharpness and vignetting as well as a colour shift which results from expired film emulsion. Therefore it is definitely worth taking the Click outside. Weighing only 460 g (including leather case and roll film) it is far from being a burden. For my liking the Click is primarily a fair weather camera, although it can be used in all weathers, independent of power supply and anywhere around the world. All that is necessary is a 120 roll film, which is manually wound forward by means of the winding knob after every single exposure. Due to the few settings (one exposure time and two apertures) photographing with an Agfa Click is so easy – far from the compulsion to take perfect pictures. When getting the film developed you will never know in advance what you will receive exactly. (However you can be sure to get a well exposed film as the Click is much more reliable than a Holga without doubt.)

The Agfa Click II provides all images with its own characteristic visual impression, even those that would look rather unexceptional and boring when captured with perfect sharpness, perfect colour reproduction and perfect exposure. That is what makes the Click so special and in my opinion more than perfect. When it is treated well, it will probably render a service for the next 50 years or more – as long as roll film and film laboratories exist.

Adobe is making a „Happy New Year“ present to everyone by giving away its Creative Suite 2 (and some other programs) for free. Of course this software has already gathered some dust since its release in 2005. Yet it offers great tools for photo and video editing as well as other tasks (layout, vector, etc.). Certainly Photoshop CS2 does not support the latest RAW files and lacks some fancy features, but it still beats most of the freeware tools available today. The following software is available for free download at Adobe’s website:

Creative Suite 2 (the whole package)

Acrobat Standard 7.0

Acrobat Pro 8.0

Acrobat 3D 1.0 for Windows

Audition 3.0

GoLive CS2

Illustrator CS2

InCopy CS2

InDesign CS2

Photoshop CS2

Photoshop Elements 4.0/5.0

Adobe Premiere Pro 2.0

To gain access to the download site, you only have to claim a free Adobe ID. If you are an Adobe customer, you should already have one. The Windows version of CS2 works fine even with the latest version of the operating system. Apple users are only able to install it on machines running Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard or lower. If you run Mac OS X 10.7 or higher on your computer, it requires a newer, still pretty expensive version of the Creative Suite.